Mount Royal University

MRU Reads Website

Spreading the art and science of teaching children to read.

Challenge

When Mount Royal University inherited an educational website that supports literacy among grade-school children, the university engaged Atom to lead a redesign that would improve its users’ overall experience and reflect MRU’s established brand identity.

The redesign needed to convey an immediate sense of MRU Reads’ core mission to provide a framework for teaching foundational literacy to elementary students. It also needed to enable teacher candidates, employed teachers, parents and volunteers to easily navigate the site’s learning materials through an intuitive content structure.

Once completed, it was necessary for the website to be easily altered by MRU Read’s non-technical staff as the program evolves naturally over time and new content enhancements are developed.

Result

Prior to beginning the redesign, Atom’s team took a deep dive into the material to ensure they fully grasped the basic principles behind MRU Reads’ learning curriculum. This entailed a close collaboration with the client’s subject matter experts – a thorough research process the MRU Reads team appreciated and a unique level of due diligence that proved its value in the final product.

To save costs on the redesign, Atom leveraged its recent work on wee read (the sister site of MRU Reads) by adapting the same customized WordPress template, which is also well-suited to enable future content alterations by MRU staff. A new navigation sidebar created by Atom provides an intuitive map for anyone seeking to help children acquire reading skills using the curriculum.

Further enhancing the user experience, Atom created a multitude of illustrations in a style that suggests a sense of fun and discovery that learning to read can offer, and these original images serve as a user-friendly roadmap for the curriculum. Clickable drop-down fields within the site’s page layouts enable users to explore a given topic in greater detail and to readily access relevant lessons and exercises.

Website

The new website reflects MRU Reads’ core mission and enables teachers, parents and volunteers helping children learn to read to easily navigate the site’s curriculum through an intuitive navigation scheme.

Illustrations

Atom created dozens of original illustrations that suggest a sense of fun and discovery, and serve as a user-friendly roadmap for the curriculum.

By asking a lot of smart questions, Atom really helped us to clarify our content and communicate it better to students. The new website also functions as a recruiting tool and generally supports MRU’s reputation in the educational community. It was even instrumental in attracting a foundation grant to help low-income families benefit from the MRU Reads program.
Professor Jodi Nickel, PhD
Mount Royal University

Team

Art direction: James Jensen
Design & illustration: Iyla So
Development: Jennifer Leigh
Project management: Elizabeth Richardson